You grow up in Adam County and
sooner or later you hear some chaw-sucking old-timer spinning about “them
hellbound critchers up on the ridge.” That kind of talk bores into the skulls
of some your softer types, like Kenny. As for me, superstition was the least of
my worries. The horses got splints half way up. I would have shot both of them
and had us go the rest of the way on foot had I not been afraid of the noise
disclosing our location. Not to mention we had to save our bullets. Not to
mention there was always the chance we could use one of beasts for meat if we
needed.

And then there was the salient
fact that we were tired. There’s a kind of tired that gets into the center of
your bones and fists up till your muscles just stop moving, and your mind
starts telling you things you can’t bear to hear: like you need to drop and
sleep—now—even though a posse of ten or twelve men not more than a
mile behind you would like nothing better than to string you up and watch you
kick, because you left the deputy sheriff gasping in a pool of it. One day, I
thought, one sweet day Kenny and I would get a chance to argue about which one
of us actually shot the man. All I know’s there was suddenly shouting, and Kenny
took a dame by the hair, and a child screamed—I can’t shoot
children—but there was a crowd of men and I blasted into that crowd. And
then a holy blaze of gunfire and screaming that sounded like all twelve angels
had come down to show us a new destruction of Jericho. Kenny let go of the dame
and we blasted, and good men fell, and there were sprays of blood and someone
shouted that the deputy was down. And that’s when we took off with about a
pound of gold each.

We dropped in a cave in the rocks
on the ridge. There was a pool of still water about ten feet across. Don’t know
if you ever smelled a cave with such a pool. It’s a cold smell, and harder than
pine, but it practically begs you to close your eyes and breathe deep until you
go unconscious. It was quiet as tombs up there too, which was advantageous.
We’d gotten a good mile jump on the posse, and in the dead quiet we’d hear
their approach for sure.

“We gotta move, Hathorne,” Kenny
said suddenly.

I leaned up on my knees. “And just
where you reckon we gotta move to?”

He licked his lips, and he kinda
shivered and looked around. “Well, it goes that there was this Shawnee girl,
went by the name of…” He stopped and licked his lips again. “Chikcheeree.”

“That don’t sound like no Shawnee
name.”

“Shet up and let me tell it. It’s
an old name. They don’t use it no more. Chikcheeree, she fell in love with a
brave, see? But he was already betrothed to another. So she prayed to the gods
and they turned the other girl into a spider and sent her up here into the
rocks to live out her years. Now because them gods did as Chikcheeree asked,
they demanded a sacrifice from her. But Chikcheeree refused, because she
figgered the gods musta sent that other squaw to torment her in the first
place. Well, the gods ain’t too crazy when us humans demonstrate our prideful
nature and lack of humility in any fashion. So you know what they did?”

“I’m itchin’ like a weasel in the
hay to hear the rest of this.”

“Well then, they went and turned
the lover into a spider too, see, and sent him into the rocks to live with the
other girl. When Chikcheeree found this out, she wept and wept, and they say
that’s how the creek in the valley was formed, and that’s why they call it
Weeping Creek, you hear?”

“Fascinating,” I said.

“Well, damn it, it is fascinating.
Well, day came when Chikcheeree had enough weeping, and that’s when she went up
into the rocks to kill the lovers. She searched high and low, searched every damned
cave up in this here ridge and couldn’t find them. She searched until she
dropped and drowned in one of the cave pools. But because of her prideful and
jealous nature, the gods doomed her spirit to haunt these pools. They say on
the full moon she rises out of the water and floats there, nekkid as ol’ Eve.
And that’s when the spider folk, the descendants of those two cursed lovers,
they come out of the rocks and git you, cuz you’re too busy looking at the
nekkid girl in the water you don’t see ‘em comin’. The spider folk drink your
blood and steal your bones away to build their temple. And they leave your skin
on the cave floor to rot.”

I stood up and stretched. “This
all makes for good campfire talk, but it don’t seem plausible. No girl can cry
that many tears. And besides, tears are salty and that there crick is
freshwater. And it just don’t make any sense anyway. Turning folks into
spiders.”

“Spider folk. Not regular
spiders.”

“And I’m telling you it ain’t
plausible. Like Navajos dancing to make rain. Ain’t no god or gods up there
watching over us, let alone watching us dance. It just ain’t plausible.”

“You go on talking like that,” he
said, turning his head toward the pool like he was avoiding my breath. “Just go
on, and you’ll see what happens to you.”

“Listen,” I said, and I wasn’t
feeling even a ghost of my patience anymore. “I once seen a family of cougars
tear apart a pack of coyote pups, all except the runt. And you know why?
Because the runt was all white, and his brothers and sisters weren’t, and so he
was able to hide in the snow. And I got to thinking that it could just as well
start a family and have pups like itself, all good at hiding and surviving in
the snow. Now if that pup can do it, then it don’t matter if any other creature
is born with two heads or five legs or what have you. If two heads suits it,
it’ll survive to breed. I reckon there’s some pretty strange things out there,
but ain’t nothing magical about any of them. So you keep a-wardin’ off spider
folk and other goblins. You know what I’m worried about? I’m worried that
there’s someone in that posse that thinks the same way I do and ain’t afeared
to come on up in the dead of night, track us to this very cave, and blow us to
hell in our sleep. I’m afeared they’ll have kids that’ll grow up and think like
they do, ‘cause I intend on outliving them no matter what. Get it?”

“I git it.”

“Now, way I see it, if there’s a
chance of even one of them coming up here after nightfall, it’s good sense for
us to sleep in shifts. We ain’t outta this yet.”

“Ok,” he said, “but I still reckon
your ideas are a tad wanting.”

I walked up and hovered over him.
“Listen to me, you crawlin’ mouse, I ain’t a-takin’ any sleep if I know you’re
keeping lookout for some nekkid Shawnee girl instead of real threats to our
safety. I swear on my life I’ll blacken your whole face afore the night’s done
if you give me reason. Goddamn you, boy, look at you. Not twenty-three years on
this earth and already y’like an old, fartin’ granpappy tellin’ tall tales for
to keep his boney jaw from a-flappin’ all by itself. Now buck up afore I whup
your chin with the grip of my knife.”

Without another word between us, I
settled down. It was still early June, not yet time enough for the day haze to
gather up and choke off the chill of night. Moonlight the color of lightning
splashed all around us, and splashed across the water, and its reflection was a
fat, dull jewel right in the center of the pool.

I wrapped myself in a skin and sat
down with my back against the wall, and everything in me just let go to the
fast-falling night and the sweet smell of the rocks. The last thing I saw afore
my lids closed was Kenny all wrapped up in a mangy skin, chuffing hot breath
into his hands.

When I opened my eyes, the moon
was brighter than ever, and there was something that wasn’t quite right about
the air. I don’t know what, but something unwholesome had crept through our little
camp while I slept, and it left behind a wake fulla dread. How can I describe
it other than that it was thick and warm, and that it wormed through the chill
night air, and that it was vaguely like gun oil. Then I saw Kenny a-sleepin’
like a little baby doll on the other side of the pool. I damned him once, and
all the blood in me boiled up to my eyes, and I was just about ready to leap
across’n’ thrash him awake with my belt, when the dull jewel in the center of
the pool dissolved like a mist, and something rose to the surface.

Nekkid and a-spreadeagle she was,
her arms resting behind her head. I musta made a sound, I don’t know, but I
know I wanted Kenny to wake up, cuz I tore my eyes away from the girl and
looked over at him.

But what was once Kenny was now
nothing but an empty burlap sack of a man, one that resembled my friend some
far-off way. He looked like a dried-up dog that lay in the sun for weeks on
end. The vision brought a kinda crazy laugh into my head, a cacklin’ old witch
of a laugh that had gotten trapped beneath my scalp and wanted out. I turned my
gaze back at the girl in the water, and a gust of a breath came out of my lungs
that almost burst my throat. She had no face. And all her body underneath it,
all that nekkid reddish brown flesh, it was all a blank stamp, with a dark
patch between the legs that was just that and nothing more, and nothing
revealed there except for more shadow, like who or whatever made her didn’t
know what a real human woman was supposed to look like and was working offa
some picture in a medical man’s notebook. Her flesh rippled and puffed, like’n
she used her whole body to breathe.

That’s when the smell in that cave
suddenly became something that called to me. It was old, and warm, and it made
me want to be there inside it. It filled my head with the lightest, sweetest
air I’d ever known. And it was the deepest hunger and the rawest lust whatever
roared inside a man when she floated over to me, and floated up over the water,
her legs above me. Then she came down a bit, hovering there, and that patchy
shadow between her legs settled before my eyes.

That’s when she blotted out a
patch of moonlight. And that’s when I saw what was around her.

No mistakin’ the haloed form of a
giant spider.

But what should have been a discernible
critter’s body was nothing but a mass of jellied glass. The only thing that had
any visible substance were the guts. I shudder when I think of the forces that
forged this thing over the ages, how over tens of thousands, maybe millions of
years, a slow and silent hand sculpted those innards to resemble a nekkid
woman. But the thing that haunts me to this day was the fact that she smelled
so nice. That frightened me even more than the sound she made in the hollows of
that ridge: a clicking of the fangs, and then a spurt of venom that went
sizzling toward the ground: chk-cheee-reeee…

I screamed then, I think, I must
have, because the thing reared its hindquarters and the faceless girl sat up.

All I know’s I had one option, the
one that got me here in the first place: I drew my piece and emptied it into
the face of that monster. It spurted blood and venom in a hateful hiss.

I didn’t kill it, but I wounded it
pretty bad. I seized the opportunity to escape.

I saw torches speckling the
landscape like some herd of vengeful ghosts marauding through the night. There
was folks in that posse did think like me after all.

“I know I take my chances coming
up here.”

I swung around and pointed my
piece toward the voice. The holy man stopped where he was and reached for his
Heaven. His black vestments were dappled with dried mud and bits of bramble
weed, like’n he’d taken a tumble or two on the way up. He had that soft, pink
look that all Reverends have. Even where his scalp was exposed was unweathered.

“Any man who fires on women and
children probably has no compunction in regards to firing on a Reverend,” he
said.

I didn’t answer this accusation.

He lowered a hand to wipe his
brow, then raised it again. “Word was sent by wire to Arkansas. They’s a-waitin’
for you there.”

I hadn’t even thought of that
possibility. Gold blinds a man to his own fortune. And somehow this new
hopelessness didn’t weigh very much.

“You know what’s in that there
cave, Reverend?”

“I’ve heard things,” he said, his
voice like an old fiddle.

“Well then, I got a choice: Either
stay up here and git eaten alive or go down there and hang.”

“There’s always salvation.”

“For you, Reverend. Not for me.”

“Are you going to kill me, son?”

I laughed, because it suddenly
struck me how, holy man or heathen, in the end all our priorities are the same.
It took a minute for me to wipe the tears from my eyes, and to stop my whole
body from shaking, and to chase every bad thought I ever had outta my soul.

“The Lord’s got a terrible
vengeance, son, but also the most loving embrace for those who accept him.”

The holy man waited patiently
while I pressed my fingers into my eyes and took a breath to steel myself up.
“Reverend, the reason why I don’t want to go back to that beloved of Hell in
there is because if’n I go, I just might want to stay. You see, there’s a call
of lust about it. You being a man of what they call moral fortitude, I figure
if there’s anyone who’ll be able to stand it…well, Reverend, I need you to
shoot that thing when I drag it out.” I held out my piece, barrel first.

“I cain’t shoot one of God’s
creatures.”

I laughed in his old, pious face.
“One o’ God’s critchers, Reverend, and I’m a-gonna rope it. Besides, it ain’t
just the critcher. I want you to shoot me too if’n that thing gets the best of
me. Understand?”

He shook his head ‘no,’ but I knew
if’n it came down to it and that thing had me in its jaws, that preacher’d have
no trouble sending us both to our dark sleep in a lizard’s wink. And wouldn’t
you know it, he took the piece.

I went back into the ridge and
damn near staggered when I saw it. Its rear half—and that woman’s
head—was drooping down into the water. I steeled my heart and jumped in
behind it.

The freezing water bit through me.
I screamed and cursed at the thing as I wrapped a rope around its tree branch
legs. There were fine hairs all up and down it that felt like corn silk. Its
leg pulsed with life and thrashed out of my grip a couple of times, as the
critcher sprayed hisses of milky venom every which way. I got a hold of one
rear leg and wrapped a loop around it. Then I pulled in the opposite direction
so that the leg swung underneath. I wrapped the rope around one of the legs on
the other side and I jumped on top of its back, rope in hand.

I almost passed dead away, smelling
that beautiful stink and staring at that gorgeous female form writhing in its
bubble of crystal flesh.

Getting a grip on the cave floor,
I pulled, and the spider flipped. Underneath was as clear as the rest of it,
with the womanly body looking like a dress dummy underneath. The guts twitched
as I pulled up and got my bearings. Then I hoisted the rope over my shoulder.

The horses reared and shrieked
like they seen the devil hisself being drug behind me. The preacher crossed
himself with his free hand.

There in the moonlight, there were
shadows flickering around, like when a candlewick gets too long. I looked back
and saw the spider, its clear-coated legs dancing in the air, a spray of bloody
venom in misty, pink clouds around its head, and that brown nekkid woman
twisting in the night.

“For the love of Christ,
Reverend!” I screamed.

I ain’t never seen a man’s hand
shake like that preacher’s grip on my Colt. Like a fish tail in whitewater.

But he shot that nekkid girl
through the heart. Then I took the gun and finished her.

After a breath, I’ll be damned if
that preacher didn’t try to convert me still through his tears.

“See here, you blubberin’ old
coot,” I said. “I’m a-headin’ on over this here ridge to fields of wild wheat
and honeysuckle. I can go in any direction I want and no one’ll see me. ‘Less
that posse down there can fly, I say I’m home free. I trust we can keep the
sanctity of the confessional up in these rocks, padre?”

He looked around and down over the
scramble of boulders below. Then he looked at me. “What posse you talking
about?”

I had only noticed then that there
were no more lights. Nothing but moon shadows. “Well now, they sure tuckered
out early, didn’t they.”

The preacher straightened, and his
voice became sermon strong. “That wasn’t a posse, son, that was a funeral camp.
We buried three men, including the deputy, and one woman. I left those grieving
folk to come up here and persuade you to justice. Once you made your way into
this here ridge, they figured that was it. They wired Arkansas just in case.”

“In case, what?”

“In the unlikely event you made it
outta here alive. You’re young, son, and have no idea what the older folk’ve
seen.”

I let what he said sink in a
moment. Even if he was wrong about there being other critchers up here, I knew
with the surety of smoke on fire that this here spider, like all critchers on
earth, had to mate. Which meant that there had to be others like it. And if’n
they’re like all living things, and the cruel forces that drive them work the
way they tend to do, well, sooner or later they’ll go lookin’ outside of caves
for mates. And on accounna they probably mount each other like dogs, and they
got that design to them, well, it’s just a matter of time afore they…

In the name of my mama, I couldn’t
finish that thought.

I decided I’d talk to some of the
more learned among those who’d sooner see me dead, maybe convince them to let
me help them hunt down every last one of these monsters until we’re all safe.

On the way down, I was silent, and
so was the Reverend. I wanted to tell him about the cougars and the white pup.
But I didn’t. If’n no one bought my sincerity, I’d have to have something to
chat about afore my walk to the gallows.

Chikcheeree
originally published in Way Out West

Paul Lorello is a freelance writer from
Ronkonkoma, New York. His fiction has appeared in Big Pulp, Big Pulp’s Kennedy
Curse and Black Chaos: Tales of the Zombie antholgoies, Membrane,
and Pseudopod. In 2014, the Pseudopod podcast of Paul’s story, “Growth
Spurt”, was chosen as the winner of the coveted Parsec Award for Best
Speculative Fiction Story, Short Form. Paul lives with three quadrupeds and one
biped and knows very little about everything.